Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Attention ex-Lemmings!

I know some of you are upset about pulling the plug on the Lemming project, but let's face it: the results were not good enough for me to keep paying the wardec costs and for the endless work of General Lemming and Doc Know. Yes, I know that numbers are heartless, but anyone wishes to win must look at the numbers. It doesn't mean that several of you weren't good enough. But there were too few of you who were.

I have limited income. Despite it constantly increased from January, along with my support from the initial 4B/week to 9B/week, I have to accept that my limit is around 11-12B/week, so I have to spend that money wisely. Upkeeping an alliance that brings half the kills of Marmite for the same cost and stopped growing months ago is simply a bad choice. I now pay for Marmite wardecs and started supporting Mordus Angels, we'll see if that helps them increasing their activity.

Highsec, where you can just dock up and deny kills to a blobbing enemy, isn't a good place for casual PvP-ers. Here you go elite or go away. General Lemming choose to move Lemmings to sov-null, a place fitting much more for casual players. I'm sure he did what he considered the best for you. But it's clearly not what you considered the best for yourself, hence the very limited support for this move. Now what?

There are two ways to continue fighting the Goons. One is to join the corp of Doc Know: The Red Barons. He is collecting those who put serious SP, effort and ISK behind their PvP. The Red Barons will move to a "merc alliance" (guess which one).

The other way is outside of highsec, the NPC null alliance Mordus Angels. They are now defying the Goon hellcamp by simply clonejumping away and while Goonies are watching bubbles, theyare slayingtherattersofGoonsandtheir minions. This kind of gameplay probably fits to more of you.

If you want to bring death and destruction to Goons in nullsec, check out the Mordus Angels forum. If you have a corp with good activity within Lemmings, contact Gen Eve, leader of Mordus. You might be able to join as a corp.

Daily smug: former good players lose their knowledge when they sell their soul to Goons. Callduron was a good player and a small-gang FC in TEST. Then he joined Gents, which soon merged into The Bastion, which is a very strong contender to FCON and CO2 for the glorious position of "best GRR food". He reported that one of the mentioned MoA food was his Rattlesnake. Usually I wouldn't mention a 0.6B kill, but the fit was especially bad. 3 mid slots were used for 2x Kinetic, 1x Thermic resist, which is the resist of the local rats. This provided 20, 71, 89, 60% of resists. Changing them to Kinetic + 2x Adaptive, the resists changed to 59, 67, 87, 79%. So for 4+2% rat specific resists, he doubled the effective DPS of the attackers who used EM missiles. The lows contained 3x drone damage amplifiers + 3x ballistic control units. Replacing one BCU with a DCII would decrease missile DPS by 85 (on a big, standing targets that cruise missiles can fully hit) and increase resists (with adaptives) to 64, 71, 88, 82, so the rat-specific resists would be the same, and the EM damage would decrease from 0.8 to 0.36, by 55%. He realized himself that rapid heavy launchers had also helped. Learn from this people! Don't become Goon minions or you'll die in badly fit ratting ships.

Best ratting fit/ship is that one which gives you the best ratio income ISKs per ticker. You should never take a part in any particular fight with ratting ship. That means if you had caught by neuts/reds while ratting, you would have being sleeping on the keyboard or you would have been afking.

The cost of maintaining the Lemmings' many war decs was horrendous, certainly too much for such a small, fledgling group. But the alliance had the potential to grow, and could have been maintained on a much smaller war dec budget. Did we really need so many simultaneous high-cost wars?

Now the Darwins Lemmings alliance is an inactive, one-corp, one-member shell. I presume the thinking is that the empty alliance has more value than the active one did. Darwins Lemmings Holding corp (along with all the other members) has been kicked from the alliance, apparently waiting for the few remaining members to wander off. The leadership obviously feels there is nothing there worth saving.

Most likely the eventual demise of the project was guaranteed by the way in which it was formed. You provided the funds, and I think you truly wanted it to succeed. The managers were happy to take your isk and play with it, but I don't think they had quite so much vested interest in whether or not it survived.

@Anonymous: if you look at the last month results http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2014/06/11t-grr-smugpdate-and-changes.html you see that there are no "high profile" and "low profile" wars. The losses of CFC alliances are proportional to their size. So if I cut half the funding, the amount of CFC damage halves and the efficiency doesn't grow. On the other hand, the members become bored due to not enough targets.

I believe it's better to let members find their own fortune than linger on wishing and hoping.

I disagree with blaming the management. What "management" does highsec PvP needs? There are no towers to fuel, supers to move. The wardecs were paid, all you had to do is undock and shoot CFC. Simply too few people did it. Most were rather waiting for Doc Know to form a fleet, which was surely fun, but had little point after the end of the POCO war.

If you are among the few who did good, I'm sorry for your loss, but you have to see that growth stopped and the numbers didn't come.

The point of Lemmings was that casual randoms were making life slightly more difficult for Goons in high sec, and reminding them that they are not exactly beloved by all. Inconvenience and pecking away at morale was the impact, not ISK losses. It was always a terror campaign, never a numbers race -- that was the source of the Goon forum tears. You don't even understand why it was successful, Gevlon.

the usual goblin thing ...you start with a really good and original idea. an idea that, with some hard work, has the chance to evolve into something, not necessarily big, but something noteworthy and longlasting.people like your project, and join. for a short period of time your project shows "significant" growth.within that period something in your mind changes, and, instead of caring for your project, and guide it through the coming months and years in new eden, you start wanting it all, now.you also alter the goals and originally thought next steps of your project.

it sais that rome wasn't build in a day.

now comes the crucial point.as your project attracts more and more people, it becomes the very opposite of your self-proclaimed anti-socialism.since that you can not let happen you start to alter and over-stretch the goals of your project more and more, to the point where people start to turn away.

maybe you want to read your initial post on the poco shooting thing again.it was a really really good idea.and, while you are at it, maybe you want to read your initial post on your hs-ganking-project again.it was a really really good idea.compare those posts, the goals that you set first, with later posts.you really should read your own blog again.

i for one am curious what your next really good idea will be.i already am sad because you will kill it the moment it starts to work out. but nethertheless am i curious.

@daniel: it's not my fault that Goons folded in 2 months and gave up their POCOs. From there there was no other goal left in highsec than killing Goons.

The initial growth stopped and the plateu wasn't high enough. Marmite had much better numbers.

There is no "next idea", the GRR project goes on. Goons and minions will keep dying, and I expect them to do so in a higher rate.

I know it's heartless, but Lemming alliance was simply not good enough to keep financing. Marmite and MoA are much better. Again: it doesn't mean that several individuals weren't very good and I hope they join the Red Barons or MoA. But they were too few.

it's not my fault that Goons folded in 2 months and gave up their POCOs. From there there was no other goal left in highsec than killing Goons.selling their pocos supposedly to themselves is folding? you need a reality check. they took the only undefended target worth more than nothing and strip the goon name from it. from there there is no goal. killing goons in highsec is totally useless.

that said, supporting moa is less than useless. they kills some goons sure because goons are attacking them, but do you think moa will get more *new* kills than lemmings got now that they have your funds? if moa could do what they did plus more than what lemmings did, then its money well spent, but chances are you wont see much if any increase in moas effectiveness.

There is no "next idea", the GRR project goes on. Goons and minions will keep dying, and I expect them to do so in a higher rate.and that accomplishes what? goons always have died, always will die, and havent shown any signs of weakening since your campaign began. in fact in many areas they are more powerful now than before. its far too easy for those null groups to earn isk as nullbears for them to care about losses of the morons in their ranks and even if somehow you managed to get people to quit they only need 10% of their rank and file to blob any battle.

Is ISK really the best or only possible measure of Goon suffering, or is it just the easiest measure for a lazy goblin? Number of ships is almost certainly a better measure, and is easy to capture. Time lost re-shipping/re-cloning/re-travelling is probably an even better measure. Local and forum tear posts are also probably better measures. It would not be logical to use an invalid measure just because the valid measures are difficult or impossible to capture.

Twice as many ships worth half as much cause twice as much immediate inconvenience/suffering. So does a ship twice as far along its planned route. For morale purposes, the immediate inconvenience of having to re-ship and start over represents greater suffering than time spent replacing ISK, which may not even be associated with the loss by a dopey Goon -- when training a dog, the reward or punishment must be immediate to be effective.

Further, it is many times more humiliating to be killed by an unskilled random than by known expert griefers. So a Goon loss to a Lemming results in more suffering than a loss to a Marmite, because the shame is much greater.

ISK loss may not be a valid measure of Goon suffering. Lemmings may actually have been *much* more efficient at causing Goon suffering than you have credited them for, because you are measuring it wrong.

lemmings formed.in the beginning it looks good, you keep calm, and seem to understand that things take their time.

goals swap, kill ALL goon pocos.this is the point where you got (overwhelmed by early "success") greedy.this is the point where you lay the foundation of the death of lemmings.this is the point where you could have left lemmings with a vs.goons wardec only, kept financing that until the end of your eve-days and just have trusted that it one day would have advanced into something significant.

lemmings not able to perform to your likings (quick enough).

hire that merc corp.

from here i stopped keeping track (read, got bored and disapointed), but it follows something along the line of, waste an aweful lot of isk, yell for the total destruction of goons/cfc/whatsoever, waste more isk on wardec costs that hs-pvp'ers would have spent anyway, yell louder and louder for more destruction, and so on, and so on.

oh, along the line, goons swapped their pocos over to rvb negating the original intention of increased poco maintenance oportunity costs...

"the GRR project goes on"you, i, and your readership know that it won't.over the next month or so, you will keep financing marmite. then you will start to run the numbers, comparea) marmite-cfc(divided by entity) amount of destruction for the time of your financing and the time before your financing.b) total cfc-hs-losses, same periods

you then will come to the conclusion that each isk you spend on grgoons can't be calculated 1to1, but that there is a much lower ratio - i think once in your comments, someone mentioned that one of the reasons why marmite does not pay a permanent wardec against goons might be, to wiggle them into a feeling of safetiness from time to time.

as a starter, let's assume marmite (on their own) would wardec goons every second week, therefore, the additional benefit of your funding would translate to only half the damage on your account (same spin as with your "cleaned" kb stats).i am sure, with your excel knowledge, you can come up with something more precise.

anyway, before the end of the summer, we will read a post from you, there you silently anounce the end of grgoons, blame everyone but yourself, quote a mojority of your commentors (without marking that your are quoting - read, claim to have come up with these certain thoughts yourself***) on why it didn't work out, pretend to have learnd something and so on, and so on...

on the other hand, as long as you enjoy the game, everything is good.

*** btw, a really bad style that you should ditch.it's not a shame to read something, and properly quote.

Yes. The JF loss terrorized one Goon, probably an experienced/committed one who will shrug off the loss and not change his Goon-ness, even if it was an expensive loss. The was 1 story to tell other socials about the loss. The other losses hit 17 Goons, possibly newer members, who may question if it is worth it to be a Goon -- you do this long enough, and you impair recruiting, reducing the number of people available to press F1. There were 17 stories to tell other socials about hwo they got ganked in nothing of value just for being a Goon.

The Goons themselves having been telling you that the ISK losses are not consequential -- may be they are telling the truth. But they have clearly been impacted -- just look at all the forum tears. Ironically, the major negative impact you caused to the Goons has been social, not financial. And the Lemmings were the aces in that effort. Marmite was going to do what Marmite was going to do anyway. It was the grassroots, little-guy, "why does everyone hate us" part that actually made a difference. You just didn't understand how and why it was successful.

Like one of the anons above, I've always had the impression that Lemmings were never about absolute efficiency but instead about better-than-expected efficiency given what they are and the psychological warfare associated with that.

See, e.g., one of your early enthusiastic posts:

"Darwin's Lemmings is forming on the very ideas the Goons formed on originally. Hundreds of horrible wannabe-PvP-ers in horrible ships zerging down Goons. This ragtag crew will have hilarious losses. Yet, they will be the end of the Goon presence in highsec. Why?

EVE is not limiting group sizes. When Goons had to grind down Delve after TEST abandoning it, they had to abort the ongoing ice interdiction. Outside of organized campaigns, highsec Goon presence is very limited. Remember that on my POCO attacks 1-1 Goons shown up. A 3-men gang could outblob them 3v1!

EVE is an MMO, you can reach anything by grinding for enough time. Want a guaranteed Goon kill? Sit on a gate with a remote seboed Tornado. If you sit there long enough, a Goon is bound to jump in the gate.

Socials are socials, respect and acceptance matters to them. Being killed and trash-talked by a highsec carebear hurts Goons. I have 12 pages of forum to prove how much their butt is hurt.

Member =/= alliance. Lemming#1242 spends 3 hours gatecamping in a Tornado just to lose it to a Goon frig? His problem, his time, his Tornado, not mine, not Marmites.

Actually, we'll be Goonier than Goons. They had to limit the "everyone can come" recruitment to SA forum, because in EVE there are awoxers. If an awoxer gets into GSF, he can awox all blues and can awox ratting Machariels or even Titans. If an awoxer gets into one of the Lemmings corp (most likely to the default corp), he can awox cheap PvP subcaps of his corpmates only. So we can literally invite every warm body. Thousands of Rifters against Goonswarm. Oh, the irony!"

@Daniel: so your idea is "Gevlon should just work harder so random guys would have easier job". No thanks. Every cooperation is a business transaction: I gave the money, they gave the kills. Except they didn't.

@Esteban: it was a nice plan, but didn't work. There weren't 1000 rifters. And there never could be, check the dotlan graph! Steady growth till mid March, then flatline.

Actually, after looking at GSF, RvB and BNI killboard, there were no 1000 rifters there either. The happy newbies in rifters is a Goon "genesis" legend. It's a propaganda lie. In all places, a few elite did everything, the rest just tagged along in fleets pressing F1 or just chatted and did nothing.

Lemmings ALREADY WAS 30-40 Marmite-quality elite PvP-ers + 200 chatters. So why not invite that 30-40 to Marmite or MoA and get rid of the chatters?

I don't understand this move. Wars in EVE are fought by human beings, which makes psychological warfare useful. And this how I perceived Lemmings -> because to some Goons (not all, but visible part) being ganked by "pubbibe noobs lemmings" is worse than losing similar ISK because of Marmites' actions or some null-entity.

Surprisingly, you seem to totally not understand this psychological aspect, and concentrate only on ISK efficiency. Which is, to be honest, not a very goblinish approach. You shall make use of social weaknesses and be above them.

It is NOT true that losses are really measured in ISK. It is approximation, which is useful enough to daily-proceding, because usually it is "good enough"approach. But loss of 100k by someone who can earn it in 10 minutes is less meaningful than loss of 100k in case of person who can't earn them as easily. If because of your action some new Goon members will be slightly less active, then Goons will be slightly hurted, despite it won't be visible in killboard entry at first glance.

In real worlds' wars destroying armies or economy is important, but it is less significant than destroying enemy's morale, so at some point they would rather surrender than continue fighting.

I gave the money, they gave the kills. Except they didn't.They gave the kills you paid for. How many kills do you expect to get for just throwing a bit of isk at people? I think you overvalue your isk.

Steady growth till mid March, then flatline.That's pretty normal. Growth will always be rapid to begin with, then peak and halt once you run out of recruits. Most high sec players really don't care about goons. We avoid burn jita and that's pretty much the end of our contact with them. If you were going after a group that hassles high sec, like the new order, or even Marmite who will wardec tiny industrial corps for easy kills, then maybe you'd have seen larger support. I'll say it again so it's totally clear. Most highsec players do not care even one tiny bit about the existence of goons.

In all places, a few elite did everything, the rest just tagged along in fleets pressing F1 or just chatted and did nothing.That's pretty normal for null groups. Few lead while the majority fill in the DPS following orders. Those few usually earn a pretty handsome salary on top of the obscene amount of income owning a section of null sec offers.

Lemmings ALREADY WAS 30-40 Marmite-quality elite PvP-ers + 200 chatters. So why not invite that 30-40 to Marmite or MoA and get rid of the chatters?Because you own neither and can;t make that decision. Marmite only want people who are going to strictly avoid any form of dying. They don't want elite players who may take risks for a good fight, they want people who will keep their efficiency above 90% by playing it safe. MoA are a null group who fight pretty much everyone and do it all for laughs, so elite "die goons die" types probably wouldn't fit in.